"The Beria Treatment."
Putin is not the first street thug to have a top political position in Russia.
Lavrentiy Beria was Stalin´s secret police chief and heir apparent. I see no need to repeat here who he was, what he did, and what eventually happened to him. Wikipedia says what needs to be said - except for one thing.
The man who drove Beria from power and had him executed, Nikita Khruschev, was ethnically Russian. However, he loved Ukraine and gave Crimea to it. . .